


the bite that binds

by majorrrager



Category: Life Is Strange (Video Game)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Creatures & Monsters, Ambiguous Relationships, Animal Death, Blood and Gore, Body Horror, Drug Use, F/F, F/M, Memory Loss, POV Multiple, Supernatural Elements, Vampires, Werewolves
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-11-19
Updated: 2015-11-24
Packaged: 2018-05-02 08:19:14
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 14,971
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5241314
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/majorrrager/pseuds/majorrrager
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Chloe's old best friend hasn't talked to her in five years, her new best friend hasn't been around for five months, and both of them have decided to come back into her life within the same day.</p><p>And it's also that time of the month. Great.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. come to

**Author's Note:**

> This kind of started as a joke about Rachel being a vampire and Chloe being a werewolf and Max being the human girl between them (does this sound familiar to you) and then it became absolutely nothing like that. So. You know. Here it is. There have already been a handful of really great takes on wolf Chloe and on the supernatural angle in general in this fandom, which. Who doesn't love wolf Chloe and supernatural drama? I SURE DO. So here's my take on the trope. 
> 
> For the most part, I'm going to play it as straight as possible. It will feature realistic descriptions of blood, gore, and other things that might squick you. If you're looking for cute wolf Chloe cuddling every chapter, then I am sorry— you won't find it here. If you're in for gore and drama with a touch of black comedy, then HELLO.
> 
> I don't usually write AUs that are this... alternate universe-y, so this is kind of experimental for me. Feel free to share your thoughts! Feedback is really important to me.
> 
> Additional characters, relationships, and warnings to be added with subsequent chapters. Please keep an eye on the tags.

Chloe Price's back is killing her, but it's the cold that might be fatal.  
  
She wakes up to rainwater dripping down onto her face from the tangled knot of branches haloing her head. She blinks up into it. A droplet falls into the corner of her eye. It stings, and the sky is bright as hell, white and searing all around her. She squeezes her eyes back shut and groans.  
  
Something's digging into her back, which is what is causing the pain that's throbbing up her spine. Chloe moves an arm to dig around for it. Her shoulder is so stiff that she can hear a dull _pop_ as she gives it a jerk.  
  
_Roll it out_ , she tells herself. She rotates her shoulder backwards. Forwards. It pops again. She winces.  
  
Under her back, her hand closes over the offending object. It's hard and cold and she thinks the flat of it might lead to a sharp edge, so she tenses, careful, and then she gives it a yank. It drags out of her flesh. Chloe's eyes fly open, and she grits her teeth. She pulls it free and dangles it up above her face to stare at it.  
  
A garden trowel.  
  
A fucking trowel? Really?  
  
"Who stabbed me?" she complains aloud, tilting her head back to look around. Fuck, it hurts. She thinks that the muck beneath her is probably already getting into the wound. She can't tell if the brown crust on the trowel and her fingers is dirt and dead leaves or if it's blood and tissue. Maybe it's both.  
  
She throws the trowel aimlessly. It goes thudding into the brush. Chloe plants a hand against the earth and forces herself into a sitting position. Her shoulder pops again. She stares down at her body, at her dirt smeared stomach and shivering skin. There's a _MISSING_ poster plastered wetly to her thigh. When she reaches to peel it away, the ink lingers behind, leaving Rachel's face on her skin like a temporary tattoo. Chloe swallows hard and reaches out to rub it away with the heel of her palm, massaging the skin so roughly that it turns red. She's long since forgotten the signature of Rachel's scent.  
  
There are bruises exploding beneath her skin all over her knees. _Great_ , she thinks. They'll be faded just in time for it to happen again in a month.  
  
Had she even made it to the cache? Chloe looks around. She doesn't recognize this spot, but even five years into her curse, she still can't see the forest for the trees. Literally. She thrusts a hand into the brush, immediately stabs her palm with a branch, and ignores it to get herself hauled to her feet.  
  
"Yo," she croaks out into her surroundings. "Yo. Mom."  
  
She waits. There's no answer. Chloe sways on her feet. She feels something hot trickling down her back, following the line of her spine. She claps a hand over the small of her back before it gets to the crack of her ass. Gross. This is doing nothing to improve her mood. Chloe raises her voice, hisses the complaint out past the yellowy incisors that still haven't sunk back into her gums.  
  
"I'm naked and someone has apparently stabbed me. _Hello_?"  
  
Nothing.  
  
"Alright." Chloe takes a deep breath in, then lets it out. She smears the blood up her back and wipes it away on her thigh. She thinks she can hear the sounds of traffic— it's distant, but it's a direction to follow. "Let's just walk it off."

   
  


The posters follow Max everywhere she goes.  
  
Which is absurd, really. It's not like the missing girl's eyes are capable of tracking her, and, really, it feels disrespectful to even think that way. But there's a sense of being followed that she can't quite shake off. Rachel Amber watches her from bulletin boards and street posts and windows. Rachel Amber examines her from bus stops and windshields and mailboxes. Rachel Amber holds a vigil from walls and ceilings and sometimes floors, crumpling underfoot when Max is least expecting her.  
  
She picks up the latest one, which has been laying face down on the bathroom tiles. Rachel smiles silently up at her, her lips sealed together like she's suppressing a remark, like, _You stepped on me again._ Max smooths her fingertip over the dirty piece of tape that had been keeping it up on the board. She peels it off and slips the corner of the poster into the frame of the display board, trying to pin it in place that way. It works, mostly. She looks into Rachel's patient eyes and then turns away from the poster entirely to wash her hands.  
  
It's hasn't even been a month since Max started at Blackwell, and she's starting to think that she's become more familiar with the missing girl than she has with any of her classmates. She doesn't know the first thing about Rachel beyond the simple statistics listed on the poster, but she can repeat them back solely by memory now: _Nineteen years old. Blonde hair. Hazel eyes. Went missing on Monday, April 22nd, 2013._  
  
If the student body had ever dwelled on the whereabouts of Rachel Amber, it must have happened before Max had arrived, because they all look past and beyond her posters like they no longer see them there at all. Like they're just wallpaper. It's been nearly half a year already. Maybe everyone's just numb, she thinks.  
  
But she hasn't gotten used to it yet. So Rachel, a girl that Max Caulfield has never met, is a constant presence in her life.  
  
She finishes washing her hands and exits the bathroom, cutting the poster's view off of her. But a different Rachel simply picks up the slack out in the hallway. When Max moves past her, another Rachel takes over. And another. Max keeps her gaze lowered.  
  
Her phone lights up, ticking impatiently. She slips it out of her pocket.  
  
_Max! I'm already waiting outside. No hurry. :)_  
9/20 11:42 am  
_Sorry, Kate. I'm on my way. Promise!_  
9/20 11:43 am  
  
Kate tells her that there's no hurry, but Max knows that the bus is due to show up in about three minutes, so she sets off at a walk as fast as her short legs will carry her. She finds Kate just where she expects to see her, lingering outside of the doors with her hands twisted in the strap of her purse.  
  
"Hi," says Kate, smiling. "I'm sure that there's going to be another bus if we—"  
  
"Come on," Max insists, embarrassed, and when she reaches out for her arm Kate laughs and lets her grab on. They both half jog to the bus stop and reach it just in time. Rachel's calm face bids them goodbye, the flyer waving like a flag from where it's fastened by one corner to the schedule hung up on the marker.  
  
"How are you?" Kate asks her as they find seats together towards the back.  
  
Max tries to pretend that she's not as out of breath as she is. "Good," she says. "Even better now that we're heading for our tea date."  
  
"You'll like this place," Kate remarks, folding her hands over her purse on her lap. "You'll be so caffeinated you won't know what to do with yourself. I'm so glad you're letting me treat you for your birthday."  
  
"I don't need _that_ much help studying," says Max. "At least... Not yet. And you don't have to treat me."  
  
Her birthday is tomorrow. The date has been looming over her for a while. Max can't lie and tell herself that she'd nearly forgotten about it, but it's been pretty low on her list of priorities lately. She knows that eighteen is a big deal — at least according to her parents and everyone who has been posting on her Facebook wall in the past twenty four hours — but there's a slight unease at the thought of suddenly being considered an adult. She still feels like a kid today, and she can't see how that's going to change by tomorrow.  
  
"Of course I don't, but I want to." Kate laughs. "Everyone else who turns eighteen here wants to do something... um, crazy. I like you, Max."  
  
There's something about Kate that is so direct and sincere, and Max feels like she has no choice but to believe whatever she says because she says it with such honesty. Still, she isn't used to being complimented so directly, and she turns her attention to her lap, wishing she weren't so shy. _Kate is the sort of friend you've been hoping to make here, dummy. She's so patient. You could at least send it back at her,_ Max thinks.  
  
"Well, I didn't come here to party," she says, somewhat sheepishly.  
  
"You'd never be able to tell from the way some of our classmates go about it..." Kate turns her gaze up to the roof, giving a huff that blows her bangs up off her forehead. "You know the Vortex Club, right?"  
  
Who doesn't? The posters are almost as omnipresent as Rachel Amber's smiling flyers, but they're ten times more of an enigma. Max nods. "They're, like... Some kind of party committee, I guess..." It's not as though she has ever gone seeking an explanation. Parties aren't quite her scene, and she knows that Victoria Chase and her mean looking male clone are in charge of the club. That's all she needs to know.  
  
"I was thinking of going, actually," says Kate, "to the first party of the semester. It's on the fourth of October."  
  
Max is surprised. "You don't really... seem like the type," she blurts out before she can consider what she's saying.  
  
Kate isn't offended. "I know," she says placidly. "That's why I thought I'd try going... to see what it's like. Do you think you'd want to come?"  
  
Max tries to picture herself at a Vortex Club party, but that would mean actually knowing what Vortex Club parties are like. She has an image in her head that is decidedly influenced by what she's read about in books and seen in movies: huge quantities of alcohol, bad music, trashy clothes, and god knows what else. The sort of birthday she'd be having if she were a total degenerate.  
  
"I... I don't know," she says reluctantly. Trying to fit herself into a space like that in her head isn't working out so well, let alone attempting to imagine demure Kate there.  
  
"No pressure," says Kate, and Max knows that she means it. The bus hums down the streets, peeling past the wide stretch of the beach. After a moment, Kate speaks again. "You're still getting used to it, aren't you?"  
  
"Huh?" Max isn't following, distracted by the view outside of the window.  
  
"Being back in Arcadia Bay," Kate amends. "It has to be strange, moving to Seattle and then back again..."  
  
Max falls silent. Kate is right: nothing has felt quite balanced in her life ever since she returned to Arcadia Bay. Blackwell had been the opportunity she'd pinned all of her focus on for months, and now that she's here, she's come to realize that she hadn't been doing much thinking about what to do after she'd mounted that hurdle.  
  
_Now that I'm here,_ she thinks, _Now what?_  
  
Well, she does have one thing she still needs to do. In a way.  
  
"It is weird," she agrees slowly. "I'm still... adjusting."  
  
Saying it like that, _adjusting_ , sends a ripple of guilt through her chest that swells up in her throat. It sounds like an excuse, and it is. _Adjusting._  
  
"What will you do once you're adjusted?" Kate asks, smiling. She hasn't picked up on anything unusual.  
  
Max closes her eyes briefly.  
  
"There's someone I should be getting in touch with," she says.

   
  


The haze fades, but the heat lasts.  
  
When she comes to, it's in a filthy bathroom. The whole place smells sickly sweet like the vaguely cherryish pink slime that she's always hated so much at Blackwell. The scent is noxious, and it rolls back into her head and makes her want to vomit. She's crumpled up next to a toilet. There's something splattered on the seat, but the porcelain is cool, and she's _burning_ , her whole body flaring up, and so she suppresses her disgust and presses against it.  
  
She leans over the bowl. Overhead, a fluorescent light buzzes.  
  
Rachel Amber's head hurts, but not as bad as her stomach does. She opens her mouth and clenches her abdomen to heave, but nothing comes up. She considers putting a finger into her mouth, but the fact that she'd come to with her hands pressed to the grimy floor negates that idea.  
  
"Okay," she breathes, just to test it out, before recoiling. Her voice is an ugly, gnarled thing.  
  
She searches her mind for a memory, a way to orient herself, but her head hurts so much that she can't string anything coherent together. It had been a weekend. She'd spent it mostly inside. Lately, she'd been feeling really...  
  
The burning extends down into her stomach, burrowing into her guts. It feels like someone's shot a hole right through her and left her wounded and gaping. Rachel leans harder into the toilet bowl, trying to soothe the sensation. It's not working.  
  
She definitely doesn't recognize what she's wearing. Her jeans have enormous tears in them, and she's not sure if they're all entirely on purpose. The t-shirt she's wearing might have been white at some point, but it's a yellowy grey now, like sweat or cigarette smoke. She reaches up with a hand to touch her face. Is she as warm as she feels? She can't tell.  
  
Everything smells so strong. Rachel wishes she could get the sick out of her, but after another few attempts, she decides that her stomach must be empty. She seals her hand over her nose and breathes out of her mouth, but it doesn't help. The smell is still overpowering.  
  
There's something hard digging into her ass. Rachel reaches beneath herself and shoves a hand in her pocket. She pulls out a wallet — somehow she's not surprised to find that it isn't her own — and flips it open.  
  
The driver's license is for a Sheryl Palmer, aged twenty three. She even kind of looks like Rachel, but it's hard to tell from the little photo. She'd never needed a fake ID before. She's not sure why she'd wanted one now.  
  
_Great,_ thinks Rachel tiredly. _At least I've been having fun._ And then, _I should probably be more scared than this._  
  
Which is true. She should be. But she's in pain, and she can't remember a fucking thing. Mostly, she feels too confused to be afraid, and beyond that, there's a mounting sense of frustration.  
  
She peels apart the wallet to examine the rest of its contents. There are several crumpled bills inside: four twenties and a fifty. There is a debit card, but nothing in the wallet that might reveal the PIN. There are a few other things— some receipts, a condom, a strip of photo booth prints. Rachel pauses on the last item, tugging it free. Each little photo shows two girls — she thinks one of them must be Sheryl Palmer — mugging together. Rachel thinks about how she and Chloe used to used to take new ones in the $3 photo booth out on the boardwalk every time they were there before it was taken away and replaced with a row of vending machines. But recalling the memory just worsens the heat making her ache all over, so she slips the photos back inside and shoves the wallet back into her pocket.  
  
Rachel gets up. She expects it to hurt — she expects to be sore — but it doesn't. Beyond the black hole forming in her guts and the vicious fever heat, she feels okay. She lifts a hand to run her fingers through her hair. Her mouth is painfully dry. There's a coppery taste on her tongue. Or maybe it's a sourness. She isn't sure. When was the last time she'd smoked?  
  
She exits the stall. The bathroom is a grotesque greenish color. The exit's right in front of her, and Rachel heads through it impulsively. Immediately she finds herself standing in the middle of an extremely cramped gas station. The twiglike guy standing behind the counter is looking at her apprehensively.  
  
"You alright? You ran into there pretty quick," he says. "I was knocking. I was about to call 911 if you were gonna keep ignoring me..."  
  
Rachel stares at him. _I have no idea what the fuck you're talking about,_ she wants to say. _What do you remember,_ she wants to say. _What was I doing when I got here,_ she wants to say.  
  
"Sorry," is what she says, and she tries a smile.  
  
The guy stares at her mouth. He doesn't smile back.  
  
Rachel presses her lips together. She slips a twitching hand into her pocket.  
  
"What have you got for menthols?" she asks.  
  
Once she has them, Rachel steps outside to light up. She squats by the door and cradles her head in her hands, the lit tip of the cigarette coming a little too close to her forehead for comfort, but the additional heat is barely noticeable. It's bright outside and very dry. That's unusual. It had rained all weekend, hadn't it?  
  
Oh. Relief floods through her. Right. It had been raining. She's starting to remember things. Good. Rachel sucks at the cigarette as she strains to recall more, but it's not doing much for her. The taste is putrid in her mouth, and when she pulls the smoke into her lungs, she sort of wants to gag. She stops before she even finishes the first one, crushes it between pinched fingers, and stands. Her stomach still hurts. It might be worse now. She goes back into the gas station and buys a bottle of orange juice and cracks it open right there in front of the cashier, who is still looking at her like he can't wait for her to leave.  
  
"I just need to use the bathroom one more time," she says apologetically. She'd smile again, but it hadn't done much for him the first time, and Rachel is not in the mood to play at it.  
  
"I guess," says the guy dispassionately.  
  
Rachel sets the half drained bottle of juice down on the counter top. It tastes like battery acid in her mouth. "Can you throw this away for me?" she asks. She doesn't wait for an answer, slipping back into the bathroom.  
  
Once she's inside, she moves to run the faucet. She attempts to wash the grime off of her hands and scrape the gunk out from beneath her fingernails. She tosses a look up at herself in the mirror, expecting to see her face in a similarly unkempt state. Surely that was why the cashier had looked at her like she was some kind of—  
  
There's a gasp. It's a sharp little sound, a quick suck-back of oxygen. It takes her a moment to comprehend that she isn't actually breathing it, that it's just instinct to respond that way.  
  
It takes her longer to understand what she's seeing.  
  
Or what she's not seeing.  
  
Rachel is burning.  
  
She has no reflection.

   
  


Maybe dropping by unannounced wasn't the best idea.  
  
Joyce looks utterly shocked to see her. When the door opens and she comprehends who it is, a look of such profound surprise flickers onto her face that a part of Max immediately panics and decides that maybe she should have tried something like a phone call first.  
  
_This was a stupid idea,_ she thinks, and she is just about ready to melt away with embarrassment.  
  
But the moment passes, and Joyce says, _"Max!"_ and the next thing she knows, she's being crushed in a hug. The relief is sweet and pure, bubbling in her chest. Joyce still smells just the same, a combination of perfume and lipstick and something else Max has never been able to identify that apparently hasn't changed at all. "Look at you!" Joyce enthuses, clasping her by the shoulders. "Oh, you should have said something— I would have made sure that Chloe was home. But I'm so happy to see you! Come in!"  
  
"Hey, Joyce. I... I'm really glad to see you, too," says Max softly.  
  
So Chloe's not home. Max isn't sure if she's disappointed or relieved. She wants to see Chloe — she badly does — but the anxiety has been killing her. It's been a very long time, and she doesn't know what to expect. Chloe might not even want to see her. They probably don't even have anything in common any more.  
  
Joyce leads her inside of the house, and Max is staggered by the sense of nostalgia that overwhelms her. She's treading familiar ground, retracing steps she's taken a thousand times before, but there is is half a decade wedged between her and the last time she was here. It's almost surreal to be back in this home. Max realizes that the amazement must show on her face, because Joyce laughs as she ushers her into the kitchen.  
  
"This must be very strange for you," she says.  
  
"You have no idea," Max murmurs.  
  
She and Joyce have just sat down at the table — and she's halfway through an abridged version of the time she's spent in Seattle — when the front door bangs open, knocking loudly into the wall. Joyce jolts up straight.  
  
"Chloe!" she calls down the hallway, groaning.  
  
"Joyce!" barks back an equally irritated voice. Max freezes at the sound of it, holding her breath. _Chloe._  
  
She stands up from her chair without thinking about it. It goes scraping back and nearly tips over. Max clumsily catches it, looking apologetically over to Joyce, who looks faintly concerned— but the look isn't directed at her.  
  
There are thudding steps coming down the hallway. Max's heart is in her throat. _This is it._ She tries to think of what to do or say, but she hasn't even approached a solution by the time she lays eyes on her former best friend, and she quickly realizes that even if she _were_ to have formed some kind of genius plan by the time Chloe emerged, it would have flown out of her head the moment she saw her.  
  
Chloe's clothes are soaked. That's strange, because it's not raining. And they're much too big for her, and they're mismatched and unflattering. Her short hair lays flatly across her forehead, like it really needs a wash. There's a shock of dusky blue at the tips, but the roots are grown out a good two or three inches.  
  
And the tattoos. The _tattoos_. They crawl down Chloe's arms all the way to the wrists and peek up at the collar of her shirt. The dampness has turned it slightly sheer and Max can see dark patterns beneath the fabric, leading out over her collarbones.  
  
Chloe looks utterly ragged and completely unrecognizable. She's standing there holding a garden trowel, and she hasn't even noticed Max. She's gesturing with it as she tears into Joyce.  
  
"Do you _see_ this?" she demands. "Do you—"  
  
"Do you see _this?_ " Joyce interrupts her flatly.  
  
Chloe stares at her uncomprehendingly, but then her eyes flick to the side. They lock onto Max's.  
  
"Chloe," Max says blankly. _Is_ this her?  
  
"Holy shit," says Chloe.

   
  


The reunion lasts all of a minute. Chloe excuses herself to the shower the moment after Joyce finishes explaining that Max has dropped by to visit. Chloe asks _How are you_ , doesn't listen to the answer, and then turns around. Max watches her head up the stairs. There's a brownish spot in the back of her shirt.  
  
She turns to stare at Joyce.  
  
_How am I supposed to feel about this,_ Max wants to plead.  
  
Joyce's expression is soft. "I'm sorry if she's a little... ah... short with you. You know, since William passed, Chloe's... She's been through a lot. A lot, Max."  
  
"I— I understand," says Max, who really does get that part. It's literally everything else that she doesn't understand.  
  
"Why don't you go head to her room and wait for her? I'll bring up some snacks," Joyce suggests.  
  
Max is a little queasy at the thought of being in Chloe's room without her, but she can't just stay here awkwardly lingering at the dinner table. She hauls her backpack over her shoulder and heads upstairs. She's too anxious to try Chloe's bedroom door, so she just stands out in the hallway, listening to the rush of the shower.  
  
Chloe's right on the other side, but it feels like another five years might as well be separating them.  
  
When Chloe emerges, she's wrapped in two towels— one under her armpits and one over her shoulders. She stands there staring at Max. Her mouth twists, twitches.  
  
"Well," she says, huffing out a sigh. "Come on." She shoulders open her bedroom door and looks at Max expectantly. Max drags her feet inside.  
  
Chloe's room is just as unrecognizable as she now is. Max stares around, stunned, at the graffiti and posters and paint marring the wall. The chaos and clutter and the musty cigarette smell. There are gouges in the floor and on the walls, like some kind of fight or mosh pit has taken place in this confined space. This room used to look so different when they were little— Chloe's dresser used to house her collection of snow globes. Now there's a half smoked joint sitting on it.  
  
"Chloe," says Max, and she has no idea how she's going to continue that sentence but her mouth runs for the finish line before her mind even starts considering it. "I'm... I'm so glad to see you. But everything's really— it's—" Chloe's looking at her, stone faced, and Max reconsiders. "We've... really changed, haven't we?"  
  
"You don't seem to have changed much," says Chloe bluntly, looking her up and down, "and you would have known about this — all of this — if you'd kept in touch. But you didn't. So."  
  
The way she says it makes Max feel like a spotlight is being shot right into her face. The guilt surges up in her like a stomach virus.  
  
"I'm sorry," she says. "Chloe, you know I..."  
  
"No, I _don't_ know whatever it is you were going to say." Chloe yanks the towel off of her shoulders and starts to rub it through her hair. Max stares at the exposed tattoos leading up to her neck. They're patchy swirls of color— leaves, branches, and drooping purple flowers. If there's anything else hidden in the designs, Max would have to get a lot closer to check, but there's something territorial and defensive about Chloe right now, so she stays exactly where she is.  
  
"I meant to," Max says weakly, but she knows that her intentions don't really matter with nothing to back them up.  
  
Chloe looks at her. For a moment, her eyes are hard, and her shoulders are raised, hard, tense. For the first time, Max sees past the tattoos. The muscles in Chloe's shoulders are taut and well defined, and they follow down to her biceps— hard and shifting beneath her inked skin.  
  
Finally, Chloe sighs. It shudders out of her. She looks very tired. "I had a long night," she says. She crosses over to the closet and hauls it open to start digging. Max turns away while she changes, although a part of her is really tempted to look, to see if those tattoos extend anywhere else. She listens to the rustle of fabric as Chloe changes, and her eyes fall upon the desk.  
  
It's a complete mess, like the rest of the room, but one thing catches her gaze immediately and holds it. It's as if Rachel Amber is saying, _Hello again._  
  
There's a whole stack of posters here. Max steps closer, smooths her fingers over the familiar shapes of the letters. _M... I... S..._  
  
"Rachel Amber," she says aloud.  
  
"Huh?"  
  
Max looks back over her shoulder. Chloe has finished changing — the clothes she's wearing now look like hand me downs from a punk rock show, and they're definitely not anything like what she would have worn five years ago — and she's crossing the room to join her at the desk. Her expression sours even further when she sees that Max is looking down at the posters.  
  
"Rachel," she repeats, dully. "She's my best friend."  
  
Oh.  
  
There's a dull kind of throbbing deep within Max's chest. She's not sure how to identify it. Does it hurt? What is it? Is that why it's felt like Rachel has been watching her this whole time? Has her monochrome gaze been saying _Where were you for Chloe_ all along?  
  
"And she's..." Max's voice is high and dry in her throat.  
  
"I don't know, okay?" hisses Chloe. "I don't know where she is. She left. She didn't say anything. She just got up and _left_ and everyone's already stopped looking for her." She reaches out to scoop up the stack of posters, shoving them under her armpit, and stomps back over to the closet to place them onto the shelf that Max knows she'd have to drag something over to stand on to reach.  
  
She wishes she knew what to say.  
  
_Maybe,_ Max thinks sadly as she watches her, _Chloe and I are just too different now._  
  
"I... should probably get back to school," she murmurs, too afraid to try raising her voice above the knot in her throat. "Maybe we could, um— we could try this again at a... a later time..."  
  
"Maybe," says Chloe without inflection. "You can come when it's not that time of the month."  
  
Max searches her face, trying to find the humor in it. She opens her mouth, prepared to laugh. But she doesn't see where the joke is coming from, or if it's even intended that way, so she just closes her jaw.  
  
Outside of Chloe's window, there is a sudden shock of thunder.

   
  


The receipt for her orange juice says it's September 20th, 2013, which has to be wrong, because Rachel is pretty sure that it's April 21st, but she'd also been pretty sure that she could be seen in mirrors, and that's not true any more, so who the fuck knows?  
  
If there's one thing that has always helped Rachel get by, it is her ability to get her shit together and keep it together even when she knows that she should be falling apart. So what if she doesn't have a reflection. So what if the emptiness in her stomach is actually a thirst for something that doesn't come in a bottle. So what if the filth caked beneath her nails and between her teeth is blood. So what if she's missing five months of memories.  
  
_So what,_ she tells herself.  
  
None of these things unhinge her mentally the way they all threaten to.  
  
What does do it is the display of maps and brochures in the gas station.  
  
_PLAN YOUR DISNEY VACATION._  
_SAN FRANCISCO VISITOR'S GUIDE._  
_NORTHERN CALIFORNIA ROAD MAP._  
  
"One— one more thing before I go," says Rachel unsteadily to the beleaguered cashier, who seems resigned to the idea that she might never leave. "What's the address of this gas station? So I can tell my ride."  
  
"We're a good thirty miles out from Redding," says the guy doubtfully.  
  
"I'll figure it out," says Rachel, telling herself, _Smile, just fucking smile._ She puts the road map on the counter. "I'm getting this." She glances to her side, past the chewing gum and energy shots and sunglasses. She plucks a very ugly bucket hat off of a rack. "And this." She searches past the headache, wondering why she's not sweating even though she's still so hot, but part of her has already figured out the answer.  
  
There is a pay phone outside. The sun has come out, and so Rachel stands in the shadow of the store's awning with the hat pulled low over her face, trying to remember what she's read about in books. She already feels like she's burning alive; she doesn't want to risk it actually happening.  
  
Five months may have passed, but not for her. Rachel still knows the number off by heart. It hasn't felt that long since the last time she'd dialed it.  
  
Six rings. When it picks up, there's silence, before a voice growls out, "Hello? Who is this?" in a way that suggests that no response will be good enough to justify the call.  
  
"It's me," says Rachel. "I need you to come get me."  
  
On the other end of the line, Frank Bowers chokes.

   
  


The storm comes in without a hint of warning. That's not exactly unusual, but the weather advisory kind of is. Max sits with Joyce and Chloe in the living room, watching it beat the windows. It's turned the sky black.  
  
"I need to go out tonight," says Chloe stiffly.  
  
"I know, honey," says Joyce. "David will get you there, if he has to."  
  
Whatever they're talking about isn't any of Max's business. She's agonizing where she's sitting, wishing that she were back at school, or that she'd never come at all. She's a stranger in this home, and while Joyce has insisted that she stay the night — she doesn't really have a choice, given the weather — she feels like a very unwelcome guest. Chloe has given her all the reception of a termite infestation.  
  
"I'm going to my room," says Chloe. She's strangely unwieldy as she gets off of the couch, grabbing her mug of coffee before she heads down the hallway. Joyce watches her leave before turning to Max sympathetically.  
  
"I'll get you all set up," she says. "I'm sorry you'll have to take the couch, honey."  
  
"It's okay," murmurs Max. She's a little relieved. She has so many memories of sleeping shoulder to shoulder with Chloe in her bed, up half the night laughing and talking, but there's no way that that's going to happen now.  
  
She just has to get through the night, and then she can head back to Blackwell in the morning and give Chloe the space she clearly wants to maintain.  
  
Max huddles in her blankets later that night, trying to get comfortable. The thunder is keeping the exhaustion away, and so she sits up with her phone's backlight on, sorting through the photos she's taken recently. But her mind is wandering. She can't stop thinking about how much Chloe has changed. Guiltily, she realizes that she hasn't devoted very much thought to what exactly Chloe has been up to during the five years they have been apart. It had been stupid to assume that Chloe would just be the same girl, but taller. But that's how Max feels: like she's that same kid with another couple of inches. Chloe is a million miles out of reach now.  
  
She watches as the time on her phone ticks past 11:59 PM to 12:00 AM. It's September 21st now.  
  
"Happy eighteenth birthday, Max Caulfield," she says aloud. No one and nothing answers, of course.  
  
She doesn't feel any different, but she hadn't exactly expected to. There are no fireworks or sudden revelations about adulthood. There's just this: wrapped up in blankets on Joyce Price's couch, listening to the rain pound the house, wishing she were anywhere else than caught in this sorry, poorly planned reenactment of a friendship it might not have been wise to try to recover. This probably qualifies as her saddest birthday ever.  
  
"Rachel Amber, huh?" Max mumbles down at her camera. _She's my best friend_ , Chloe's voice echoes in her head.  
  
There is a thudding sound from upstairs. Max stiffens instinctively, her attention immediately caught by it. She's poised to hear more, and she does: another thud.  
  
She about to get off of the couch and peer up the stairs when something moves outside of the window.  
  
A black mass drops from the sky and lands, crouched, out on the rain soaked grass. The figure is shuddering, rippling— changing. It's so dark out that it's little more than a silhouette, but Max swears that she can see its body contorting, bones shifting beneath the skin, which is exploding outward in a mass of fur. She is frozen with shock and fear. What the hell _is_ it? A bear?  
  
A wolf?  
  
The figure thrashes where it's crouched, like it's in pain. Max realizes that she's holding her camera. She fumbles to lift it, to engage the flash. She aims and shoots. The creature doesn't notice the flash; how would it, with all of the lightning outside?  
  
The photo rolls out and flutters down onto her lap, but Max is still paralyzed and staring, because the mass is getting to its feet, and it does so just in time for her to be able to see the last of Chloe's blue hair disappear among the fur.

   
  


Six and a half hours later — Max has been counting every minute — she watches Chloe walk back into the yard as the sun breaks over the horizon, looking even more ragged than when she had dragged herself into the house yesterday. She's not wearing the same clothes she had on when she went to bed.  
  
Max stares, uncomprehending, as Chloe scales the side of the house and disappears, presumably through her own bedroom window.  
  
_Okay,_ she thinks.  
  
She's looked at the photo in her lap a thousand times over the past six and a half hours. It's not a very good one. The flash had bounced off of the inside of the window, so half of it is blown out. But beyond it there is a very distinct shadow. Max knows she's not imagining things. The proof is in her hands.  
  
Her legs are stiff when she gets up from the couch. She realizes she's been holding the same tense position for most of the night, and she dances from foot to foot, trying to shake it off. She goes to the kitchen to fill a glass of water at the sink, clutching at the photo. She feels oddly calm, maybe because she's already had nearly seven hours to go through most stages of shock. By now, she just wants to talk to Chloe.  
  
Once upstairs, she faces down the door and knocks very quietly.  
  
"Mom," comes Chloe's voice from the other side, tired sounding, "I'm fine. I'm gonna crash."  
  
"It's me," says Max.  
  
Silence. But then there's the sound of footsteps, and Chloe pulls the door open. Max's hand falls away from the knob.  
  
Chloe's hair looks like she lost a bet. There's a swelling bruise on her jaw. She's still scowling. Max wonders if she knows how to make any other face these days, but she thinks she's starting to understand why.  
  
"You were never _this_ much of an early riser," says Chloe. "Is it because it's y—"  
  
"Good morning," says Max. She holds out the photo.  
  
Chloe's eyes drop down to it, and then Max finally understands what it means for someone to turn white. Chloe literally loses all of the color in her skin, turning a pale, sickly shade right before her eyes. Her mouth moves soundlessly as the color then all returns at once in a reddish flood. She gawks down at the photo, and then up at Max.  
  
"Okay," she says. She sounds a little freaked out. "Worst case scenario."  
  
A part of Max had been hoping that Chloe would look down at the photo and see nothing. That she'd have imagined it after all. That is definitely not what is happening.  
  
"Let's..." begins Chloe, looking nauseous, "let's go get breakfast. This'll be easier with Joyce around."

   
  


Chloe is into her third plate of hash browns and bacon before she even starts talking, and even then, it's just short questions about Max's classes at Blackwell. Max sits there staring at her, providing her with stock answers. She's long since finished her grilled cheese sandwich, and watching Chloe shovel food into her mouth is making her wish she hadn't eaten at all.  
  
Joyce keeps walking by. Chloe hasn't said anything to her yet, and Max doesn't know how her presence is supposed to help with a conversation that isn't even happening.  
  
The photo sits between them, pressed face down on the table. Chloe shoots it a look now and then. Max keeps her eyes moving when she's not looking at Chloe, taking in the entirety of the Two Whales. At least she doesn't feel like an impostor here, but maybe that's because she's not the only one who sticks out. Chloe is a voracious slash of color and chaos among the silent, brooding truckers.  
  
As far as birthdays go, this one has gone from sad to surreal. Max feels like her entire universe has been disassembled and rearranged into an impossible object. An optical illusion.  
  
"Are we... going to talk about it?" Max mumbles.  
  
_It._ She's hardly allowed herself to think about what _it_ is, because it makes her feel, distinctly, like she might be losing her mind. _Stuff like this... whatever this is... It's not real,_ she tells herself. _It's not._  
  
She's waiting for Chloe to explain. Waiting for something that will make perfect sense, something that will slot it all together and stack it neatly into even piles. Max is desperate for an explanation that will keep her worldview locked down in the comfortable place it's always been. She and Chloe may no longer be friends — they might never be again — but Chloe can at least grant her that, right?  
  
"Yeah," says Chloe finally. She picks up her napkin and starts dabbing at a cut on her lip, which has split open from her violent method of eating. "Yeah, we're going to—"  
  
The door to the diner swings open. Max looks over briefly. A girl walks in. She's wearing a hat that she pulls off of her head the moment she steps through the door, and then she looks around the diner. She doesn't hold Max's attention for very long; she turns her gaze back to Chloe.  
  
But Chloe is staring at the girl, her eyes huge. Max looks at her, confused, and then glances again towards the girl, who is walking towards them. This time, she focuses on her.  
  
She's beautiful in the way the storm last night was beautiful, because Max is also a little afraid of her. There's something marblelike about the girl, something stiff and hard in every one of her movements. But her _face_ , Max thinks in shock. Where has she seen her face...? Her hair is long, and it's a caramel color that Max doesn't recognize, but when the girl gets closer it all comes to her at once, the recognition stunning her: she can't place this girl's face because she's never seen it in color before. She's only seen it in greyscale.  
  
"Wow," says Rachel Amber, coming to a stop in front of their table. She's looking right at Chloe. "You look the way I feel."  
  
Chloe's plate goes crashing to the floor.


	2. long night

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you to everyone who gave me feedback on the first chapter! The reception to it has been totally amazing. It really pushed me to get the second one out fairly quickly, haha. I can't guarantee that I'll be able to keep up a pace like this, but hearing back from people really helps motivate me, so if you have any thoughts to share, then by all means :')
> 
> Two new POV characters are introduced in this chapter, most of which actually takes place parallel to the first chapter, including one non-chronological segment. We're going to be doing a lot of jumping around in this fic! I am not sorry. Also: heed the 'animal death' warning that's been added to the tags, if that's relevant to you.

The drive takes roughly seven hours. They are easily the longest seven hours of Frank Bowers's life, and he has endured a lot of long, long nights.  
  
He's not used to taking the RV out over long distances, or even driving it for long stretches of time, and the RV isn't used to it, either. He secures everything down, folds up the table and locks all the drawers and shoves dirty dishes and utensils in the refrigerator in lieu of washing them and putting them away, because he doesn't have time for that. He checks his stash and secures his glass pieces in a cocoon of sheets and laundry. He puts Pompidou's bed down up front and says, "Get in." He clears the reflector from the dashboard and gets in the driver's seat and only climbs out to gas up shortly before leaving the outskirts of town. The entire process takes approximately half an hour, which is twenty nine minutes too long, as far as he's concerned.  
  
The RV groans and shudders as if it's in pain, a constant exhausted thrum beneath him. He keeps his heel hard on the gas pedal. The map, spread out on the dash above Pompidou, trembles. He doesn't have a GPS. He'd never needed one before. He'd thought about getting one back when he and Rachel had made vague plans to get to California together.  
  
Rachel. He can't get there fast enough.  
  
It's already past dark by the time he crosses the state border, and it's nearly midnight when he gets there. 'There' is hard to define— somewhere between a place called Dunsmuir, which he has never heard of, and a place called Redding, which he doesn't give a shit about either. 'There' turns out to be a gas station, which is good, because he needs to refuel. But it's bad, too, because Frank knows what can happen around halfway places like this, he knows what men lesser than him are capable of, he knows what can happen to young girls out on their own.  
  
He's shaking by the time he pulls in. Frank's been clean for nearly eight months now. His original bid at sobriety had been an attempt to clean up his life so that Rachel might have wanted him again. It had continued after her disappearance because even though it had made him want to start using again more than anything else had before in his whole hard life, it had felt like a promise he'd made to her, and he wasn't going to break it. One more day sweating out the urges. One more week spitting on the compulsion. _Come back to me._  
  
But he'd give anything for something hard right now. Maybe the painkillers that have been such a hit with the Blackwell kids these days. But Frank knows that there's really no such thing as calming yourself down by fucking yourself up — he's not nineteen any more — so he parks the RV around the back of the gas station, takes a sip of water before offering it to Pompidou, and runs a thumb over the soft spine of his Bible. Then he gets up. He could do a few hits, because weed's an indulgence no worse than beer, but he holds off from even that.  
  
He unlatches the door and Pompidou immediately bounds up and launches out to find something to piss on. Frank steps out into the brisk night air and looks up at the sky. It's startlingly clear out, a purplish expanse with a million pinheads of light. There's nothing but black horizon in every direction, except for the gas station, a glowing lighthouse in a sea of stars.  
  
There's someone standing under the awning, smoking. Frank stares. He is suddenly afraid. Scared that none of this was real. Terrified that he's lost it. But he walks towards it.  
  
Rachel lifts her head. For a moment, they stare at one another, and then she smiles with closed lips. She lowers the cigarette.  
  
"Hello, Frankie," she says.  
  
"Rachel," he says raggedly, and the only reason that he doesn't drop to his knees and start howling hallelujah is because shock has him paralyzed.  
  
"You came for me," she says warmly. In the fluorescent light, her skin is is the color of smoke, dark halos beneath her eyes, her hair all split ends and flyaways. Her clothes are dirty. He doesn't see the earring she'd worn for every day he'd ever known her. She seems naked without it. Flayed open.  
  
She's still so beautiful.  
  
He doesn't know what to say. Of course he'd come, he could tell her, but they both know he'd never have refused. He's loyal to her like Pompidou is loyal to him.  
  
"Where," he starts, and his voice is shaking and usually he'd hate that, but he'd been soft around Rachel, he'd been so soft for her, and her absence had only formed a brittle shell around that malleable core. "Where the hell have you—"  
  
"Could you go in and grab me another pack for the road?" Rachel's smile has faded. She turns the pack of cigarettes towards him, showing him its lolling, empty mouth. "The guy in there really doesn't like me."  
  
"Okay," says Frank, because there is nothing else to say but 'okay'. He is utterly incapable of saying no to Rachel. In five months, that apparently hasn't changed. He accepts the twenty that she holds out to him. Her fingertips are scorching hot. He looks at her helplessly. Everything inside of him screams to touch her, to pull her against his body and feel her. Solid. Alive.  
  
He keeps his hands to himself and goes inside the gas station. The cashier takes one look at him and shrinks back behind the counter. Frank knows that he's intimidating even on a good day, but when he catches a look at himself in the security monitor behind the cash register, he gets why the guy looks so terrified. Frank's never seen himself look so tense.  
  
His phone suddenly sounds an alert. Frank shoves a hand in his jacket and flips it open. _ROTT,_ says the screen. There are two new messages. Frank puts it away without opening them.  
  
He asks for menthols and grabs two strips of beef jerky for Pompidou, and then he heads back out, half afraid that Rachel won't be there when he emerges. But the only thing flickering is the lights; Rachel is a solid entity, not a hologram or a hallucination.  
  
Frank holds out the pack for her. Rachel unwraps it, draws out a new cigarette, and lights it off of the stubby end of the dying one. Her eyes are far away. Frank follows them. She's watching Pompidou, who is sniffing around the dry grass at the end of the lot.  
  
"Is it okay if we get going right away?" she asks him. His head snaps back towards her. Rachel's looking right at him. "I can drive if you want to crash."  
  
Frank rolls his shoulders. "I'll drive," he says, and then, "Where's your stuff?"  
  
"I don't have any stuff," she says. For some reason, Frank isn't surprised. He looks her up and down. It's just Rachel in dirty jeans and a wallet bulging out of her pocket. That's it.  
  
He feels sick.  
  
"What the fuck happened to you?" he asks her, weakly. Maybe they don't have anything any more, and maybe they never will again, but _God_ , he loves her, he'd never stopped loving her, and maybe he never _will_ stop loving her, and if whatever she's been doing and wherever she's been has made her happy, then that's fine. It's actually the best case scenario. But, looking at her, he can't help but feel like that's not what's happened. Far from it.  
  
Rachel doesn't have an answer prepared for him this time. She falls silent. She stares down at the glowing red eye of the cigarette. "Can I shower first?" she asks him.  
  
There's a constricting in his chest.  
  
"Did someone hurt you." It's not a question.  
  
"Frankie," she says, "I'm really fucking tired." Smoke wafts out of her mouth.  
  
Hurt. Frank knows hurt. He's been hurt before, hurt badly, and the pain had driven him to hurt others. Saving Pompidou had forced him off of that path and set him on a better one. Finding Rachel had kept him steady on it.  
  
"I swear to fucking God, I _swear_ , if someone hurt you—"  
  
His voice pitches and then flatlines. He breathes out. His nostrils flare. The only reason he cuts himself off is because Rachel's plaintive face is the same one she'd given him the last time he'd ever seen her. The day they'd broken up.  
  
"Okay," he says, even though she hasn't said a word. "Okay... okay." He doesn't know what he's assenting to, but it seems to be good enough for Rachel, who steps off the curb and heads for the RV. He follows her. There's a hole in the back of her shirt big enough to fit a hand through.  
  
Rachel hauls herself up the steps. Frank turns and cups his hands over his mouth. "Pompidou!" he yells. "Get over here!"  
  
There is two seconds' delay, and then a correlating bark of affirmation. Pompidou comes loping out from behind a big rig, and Rachel, halfway inside the RV, turns and brightens again when she sees him.  
  
"Hi, baby!" she coos, and she adopts a half crouch, arms wide. "Come here, baby!"  
  
Although Frank feels like every part of him inside is screaming for answers and for a revenge he cannot quite identify or justify yet, this still makes a smile twitch onto his mouth. Rachel has always had a way with his dog, and Pompidou a way with her. _Our baby,_ she used to say, laughing. Sometimes Frank would think that Pompidou loved her more than he did. He loved her better, at least. Less selfishly. He'd never wanted to share Rachel with anyone, and he'd never wanted to share Pompidou with anyone, either, but nothing had made him happier than seeing the two of them together.  
  
Pompidou is running, a total blur. Rachel is ready for him. Frank stands aside. He figures that she can still handle the collision of Pompidou's hugs.  
  
Except the dog comes to a stop within ten feet of the RV. It's almost comical. A full body twitch seems to pass through him, making him seize up, and his hind legs fly forward as he plants his forelegs in the asphalt.  
  
Frank knows the make of the reaction before Rachel does. It's panic, which makes it aggression. But because he's not prepared for it, he doesn't respond fast enough.  
  
Pompidou is looking right at Rachel. He's barking and snarling, snapping his jaws and dripping saliva down his front, the whites of his eyes bulging around the irises like an eclipse. Frank finally absorbs the shock and gets it, sees the fight in the dog, and he launches forward and grabs him around the collar before he can complete the jump and leap for Rachel's throat.  
  
It's a struggle. Pompidou is ninety pounds of solid muscle, and he turns the aggression onto Frank immediately. He's not scared of his dog — he never has been — but he's stunned by the reaction. Pompidou has never responded to anyone like this in the last handful of years after a long, hard rehabilitation, much less _Rachel_. Frank locks a grip on him, mumbles soothing things, says, "It's Rachel. You're okay. She's here. You're fine." Pompidou keeps growling, drooling, staring at his wanted target. Frank finally looks at her.  
  
Rachel has somehow gone even paler. She's still in a crouch, her arms out. She looks hurt.  
  
But, somehow, she doesn't look shocked.  
  
"I'm going to get in the shower," she says finally, quietly, over the motor hum of Pompidou's growling, and she stands and disappears inside of the RV.  
  
The moment she's out of sight, Pompidou relaxes, but barely. He stops growling, but he starts to shake in Frank's arms. Frank lays his cheek over the top of his head and closes his eyes. "Did the drive stress you out?" he asks quietly, but somewhere deep in his chest he already knows that that's not the answer. "It's Rachel. Remember?"  
  
Pompidou starts to whine, long, reedy whimpers. He turns his head up towards the sky, like he wants to start howling. Frank looks, too. The moon is so full.  
  
"I know," he says. "I know."

   
  


Nathan gives up on trying to get a hold of Frank Bowers after the fourth text message. He's gone through this routine enough times to know that after the third demand, chances are slim, and after the fourth they're nearly impossible. Frank is busy. He's cut off for the night. Maybe it's the weather.  
  
And that would normally be manageable, but it puts him in a pretty bad place tonight.  
  
His dorm room is stifling now. Nathan opens the windows and leans out so heavily that he has to brace his legs against the desk to not go toppling. It's a stupid idea, given the storm that's screaming outside. The rain is so thick that he can't see anything of the grounds through it. Even the light from the lampposts barely penetrate the black, and it's fucking freezing. Nathan lets the rain soak him. He waits until the water is running into his eyes and his mouth and plastering his shirt to his back. When he goes staggering backwards into his room again, dripping, he doesn't feel much better.  
  
He throws the burner phone down and grabs for the other one that's sitting on his desk.  
  
_need your help_  
9/21 12:09 am  
  
Bowers might not be answering, but Victoria is. She's never failed to respond when he's called for her. Always faithful. Ride or die. It guts him to know that he doesn't deserve it, and she'll never know why.  
  
_you're LUCKY i'm still awake_  
9/21 12:11 am  
_i know_  
_u said u knew someone_  
_need now_  
_who_  
9/21 12:11 am  
_i can hook you up tmrw._  
9/21 12:14 am  
_now_  
9/21 12:14 am  
  
His hands are trembling. But Victoria will come through. She always does. She's so good. She doesn't even know how good she is, and how bad he is in comparison.  
  
_your going to have to call her yourself then_  
_I'M not grovelling at midnight for this shit_  
_823-4573_  
9/21 12:15 am  
_thanks_  
_i owe u_  
9/21 12:15 am  
  
Nathan tries not to think of how many times he's said _I owe you_ , or the size of his karmic debt to Victoria Chase. For now, he has a phone number. He paces as he dials it off of the burner phone, dripping rainwater all over the carpet. The window's still wide open, and the storm is whipping inside, slashing wet streaks across his desk and computer and wall. He ignores it. The noise and cold doesn't add anything to his head that's not already there.  
  
Three rings. Then a girl's sleepy voice. "Hello?"  
  
"You're gonna meet me down in the lobby. Right now."  
  
The girl immediately sounds a little more awake. Almost amused. "Am I?" she says, humming. "I dunno. Who gave you this number?"  
  
Nathan doesn't have the presence of mind or the faculties to fuck around. Ever. He needs. He _needs._ "It's gonna be worth your while."  
  
A pause. "Right now?" There's a sound of something soft and heavy rustling in the background, like the girl is climbing out of bed. Nathan twitches. Good.  
  
"Yeah, yeah. Right now," he says. "And I want the heavy shit. I know you got it. The one sixties. I'll know the difference. _Don't_ try to fuck with me." He crosses to the dresser and grabs for his wallet. He thumbs through the flat bills in there. _Worth your while,_ he thinks, but he's too scattered to add up the numbers in his head right now. Whatever. She'll take what he gives her. It'll be generous regardless.  
  
"So," she says, "are you going to tell me who I'm supposed to meet with down there, or should I be looking for the dude that's tweaking?"  
  
"Shut up," he says bluntly. Then, "I'll be the only one down there this time of night."  
  
"Touché, Nathan." There's a sound of a zipper from her end of the line. Nathan briefly contemplates just who he's talking to, but then accepts that he really doesn't give a shit. She has what he needs. It could be Ms. Grant for all he fucking cares.  
  
"You're heading down now?" he asks. He can hear the strain in his own voice. Fuck. This is bad. This is so fucking bad. If he doesn't get what he needs within the next five minutes— fuck. He doesn't want to think about it.  
  
"Yeah," says the girl. "What's this about? Party supplies? Isn't it a little early? I didn't think your next country club square dance was until October."  
  
"No," he says. "Not party supplies. None of your business."  
  
"Noooo shit," she says. "So it's for you."  
  
"It's for _none of your fuckin' business_. Are you dense? Get moving." Nathan puts his phone on speaker and sets it down so that he can peel his wet shirt off. He wrests his way into a sweater. It sticks to his damp skin. He grabs the phone again and his keys and heads for the door.  
  
"It's past midnight," says the girl sourly. "And you need it _now?_ And you can't wait? Won't lie to you: I'm gonna feel like a pretty bad person selling to someone like that."  
  
"Yeah," says Nathan. _Need._ It's a need that can never be satisfied. One that always asks for more. He's not laughing. "Put up."

   
  


Rachel scours her body beneath the lukewarm, weak stream of Frank's shower. She scrapes the washcloth over her burning skin over and over, trying to rub herself raw. She rubs shower gel into her hair and tries to pick the blood out from under her fingernails. She uses Frank's toothbrush and spits the foam down her body, watching it ooze down her stomach. By the time she's finished, she feels no better, nor any differently. She's still burning up when she steps out, and it might be worse this time, as though by trying to clean herself off she's just exposed a more sensitive layer of skin.  
  
Frank is sitting in the armchair when she gets out, and he turns to look at her. So does Pompidou, who immediately begins going absolutely feral again.  
  
Somehow, she'd convinced herself that it was a fluke, but when Rachel looks into Pompidou's crazed, fearful eyes, she knows that he _knows._  
  
Frank is utterly dismayed. He's on the dog again in a flash, and Rachel takes a step back and moves far out of the way so that Frank can wrestle Pompidou into the bedroom. He gives him a nudge and slams the little door shut. On the other side, Pompidou begins to howl.  
  
Rachel gets why. He's confused and scared. He just wants to protect Frank from the monster he's let into their home.  
  
They stare at each other. Frank's never looked more haunted. She used to tease him about the puppy dog face he'd get when he was upset with himself, the way his brows would turn down and his eyes would droop and he'd looked so mollified, as though if he'd had a tail to put between his legs, he'd do it. But Frank doesn't look abashed now. He looks weary, and lost, and a lot like he wants to cry.  
  
_Did someone hurt you._  
  
Would she tell him, even if she knew? Rachel's not sure. She and Frank were already a past tense concept before this... this five month gap that she still has trouble believing in. It hadn't been an amicable breakup, and that was putting it gently. Rachel had figured that they would never cross paths again, the both of them abraded too raw by the experience, too wounded to ever attempt to reconcile.  
  
But he'd been the first name she'd thought of today, and maybe that has to count for something.  
  
"We should get going," says Frank after the silence carries on for too long. Pompidou whimpers distantly.  
  
"Yeah," says Rachel. She draws the towel tighter around her body. "But can you grab me some clothes first?"  
  
Frank nods jerkily, and then he moves past her to the bedroom. She hears him placating a whining Pompidou before he emerges with an armful of clothing. Rachel accepts the bundle, rubbing her fingers over the worn fabrics. So he still remembers which clothes of his she liked wearing most.  
  
They get going just a few minutes after that. Rachel drags the armchair up towards the front and positions it awkwardly behind and sort of next to the driver's seat, and then that's it. Silence. They've got seven or eight hours until they're back in Arcadia Bay, she estimates. Rachel is aching for normalcy. She wants to be able to lay in her own bed and check her text messages and cruise down by the beach on her bike. Five months only feels like a day, but it's taking forever.  
  
How ironic, she thinks, that she'd finally made it to California, and now she's desperate to get back to Oregon.  
  
_Five months._ Rachel stares at the darkness beneath the half moons of her nails.  
  
She looks sideways at Frank, whose eyes are steady on the road. Part of Rachel wants to ask him to put some music on. She wants to ask if he still listens to the same playlists. If he remembers their songs. Rachel just wants this to be something usual. Nothing out of the ordinary. Just a drive.  
  
But she's still nursing an insatiable burn low in her stomach and in her throat, and even though Frank hasn't cleaned the grimy mirror above the sink maybe ever, she still can't see herself in it.  
  
Half an hour passes, and then another. Rachel keeps her eyes on the road and the sky. The stars are scattered sparks above her. She thinks of constellations and patterns. She thinks of how she'd always considered herself to be born under a good sign.  
  
She realizes, with a start, that she's had a birthday.  
  
"I'm nineteen," she says suddenly, amazed.  
  
Frank looks at her briefly, and then back at the road. His expression is weird. "Yeah," he says.  
  
Rachel realizes belatedly that she's said nothing about not being able to remember a thing. She falters, freezes up. "I... didn't celebrate it," she says, which is the truth as far as she is concerned, because what she can't remember isn't technically lying.  
  
Silence. The RV crawls. The desert around them goes on forever and ever. Rachel settles back in the armchair. The fabric is rough on her burning skin. Will she ever feel comfortable in her own body again? It's like slipping on the skin of a stranger.  
  
Pompidou whines from the back again. Maybe she reeks all the way through the door. She's lucky Frank can't smell it.  
  
"Happy birthday," he says abruptly.  
  
"Thanks." There's suddenly a sadness budding in her chest like a sprout.  
  
"You should have been home," says Frank dully. The _with me_ is implied.  
  
"I'm about to be," she says. She's wearing Frank's sweats. They're pilling everywhere. She starts picking them off with her dirty nails, rolling the lint between her fingers.  
  
"You never said a fucking word, Rachel. To anyone." Frank's voice pitches up. He struggles to rein it in on the last three syllables.  
  
She didn't? That answers a few questions. Rachel can't even fathom being that inconsiderate. Sure, she'd fantasized about doing just that — fucking off without a word, _finding_ herself in a memoir-perfect manner — but what teenager hadn't entertained dreams like that at some point? Realistically, she'd known that she would never do it. There were too many people to say goodbye to, to owe that to. She wonders again what the fuck happened to her. She wonders why she can't remember. She wonders if she wants to.  
  
Picking her words carefully, Rachel says, "I was ready for a change." She knows that much. It's the truth.  
  
"Do you know what you did to Arcadia Bay?" Frank doesn't wait for her to answer. "Whole fucking town had a meltdown. Huge search. Swept it all the way into July. They talked about you up in Portland. You were on the news. You could have said something. One word. That's all anyone was asking for," says Frank, and his hands shake on the wheel.  
  
She could have. She would have a way to justify it all to him, she wants to tell him, if she could remember.  
  
Frank's anger always burns so hot and so intense, like a meteor in the atmosphere, and it burns out just as quickly. She can tell that he's stone cold sober, and that helps her relax. She picks herself off of the chair and takes up the map. It's hard to make it out in the darkness of the vehicle, but Frank has highlighted the path in scratchy pencil marks. She runs a finger up the trail.  
  
_Let's just drive out of here forever._ It had been a promise, once. Rachel lowers the map and looks at the man who had once embodied a future that she'd turned her back on for a brighter, steadier, but maybe less intense one.  
  
"Bet you never thought we'd be driving the coast together like this, huh?" she asks softly. She hasn't got it in her to say _Frankie_ again.  
  
They're virtually alone on the highway. It's been a while since any set of headlights has come for them. "I didn't think we'd be driving it together at all," says Frank.  
  
_Oh,_ she thinks. Just that: _oh._ "Because I broke up with you?" Somehow it's a relief to be talking about this, to be discussing their tangled, bloated thing of a breakup rather than the five months she can't remember or the heat turning her body to scorched earth.  
  
But Frank doesn't let that sleeping dog lie. "Not because you—" he starts, strained. "Because I— I thought you were fucking _dead,_ Rachel! We all did! Fuck!"  
  
The RV stays remarkably steady, even if Frank's not.  
  
_Dead,_ repeats Rachel in her head, and she wants to laugh, because the concept is so fucking absurd. Dead doesn't happen to girls like her. But waking up in a gas station in the middle of fucking nowhere wasn't supposed to happen to her, either, and amnesia wasn't supposed to happen to her, but she did, and her head is empty, and her reflection is gone, and maybe Rachel should stop trying to pick apart the kind of girl she thinks she is, because she's never been all that certain anyway.  
  
Life's been a series of roles for her. Playing the 4.0 student and the model and the party girl and the thrasher and the addict. Rachel can be all of these things and more, and she has been, and she is, based on when and where and why it's necessary.  
  
Things like that don't happen to girls like her.  
  
"Well, I'm not," she says.  
  
"You're not," chokes Frank.  
  
He sounds like he's had enough for now, and so has she. Rachel gets up and drags the chair back over to his computer. She thinks about turning it on and checking her Facebook, maybe Googling her own name, but she immediately thinks better of it. She's probably better off not knowing. She sits and smokes instead and ignores her boiling stomach.  
  
An hour later, Frank pulls over at a rest stop. She only knows because the RV comes to a sudden halt.  
  
"I have to take a leak," he says dully.  
  
Rachel's throat feels like it's been pulled over a bed of nails. "Do you have any juice?" she asks, although she's thinking about how bad the last bottle had tasted. Was that just hours ago? It feels so much longer.  
  
"No. Come outside," says Frank, and he gets up and unlatches the door and gets out.  
  
Rachel gets to her feet, catching the sweatpants around her hips before they dip down. She cinches the drawstrings tight and then hunts for the shoes she'd woken up in, a pair of worn green flats. She can hear scratching from Pompidou as she climbs out, as if he knows that the monster is getting away.  
  
This gas station is just as featureless and liminal as the other one. Frank's got his hands in his pockets as he stalks towards it. Rachel follows much more slowly. She feels sluggish and vaguely nauseous, the way she does whenever she spends an entire day out in the sun. Like she's been baked. Not in the fun kind of way that she and Chloe love.  
  
The cooler of drinks doesn't look appetizing at all, but Rachel takes a bottle of lemon tea anyway. She looks over the shelves of junk food, all shiny foil wrappers in various shocks of color and sugar.  
  
_I'm so hungry,_ she thinks miserably. But not for anything in front of her.  
  
For what, then? For what? She can barely stand to think about it.  
  
Frank takes the bottle from her and pays for it without asking, and then he disappears for the bathroom. Rachel goes outside to wait. There's only one other person out here, a trucker that's running the gas pump. He looks vaguely familiar, but so do all truckers. Rachel's met a million of them. They're all the same. They're all assholes— and that's saying a lot, she knows, given her unusually high tolerance for badly behaving men.  
  
The guy is leering at her. Rachel stares back, dully. He's broad, with a neck like a tree trunk. She can see the tendons in it.  
  
She wonders if it would be hard to find the veins.  
  
Her stomach turns over violently.  
  
_I need to eat._  
  
The trucker hooks the nozzle back in place. He looks at her again, and when he finds that she's still looking back, he gives a cocky sort of smirk, and then he ambles in her direction. Oh. He thinks she's interested. On any other day, that might be funny.  
  
_Is human flesh red or pink inside,_ Rachel wonders faintly. Would it look more like flank steak or ground beef? If she digs him open, what will she find?  
  
Rachel's been a vegetarian since she was fourteen.  
  
_I'm so fucking hungry._  
  
No one would have to know, she realizes. They're in the middle of nowhere. She could lure him into the darkness. She could quell the burning. They'd be back on the road within minutes. She could. She could. She could. She could.  
  
The trucker gets closer. Rachel feels like she's losing her mind.  
  
The door chimes behind her. She rounds on it, wild eyed. Frank stands there, staring at her with a dark expression. Frank is a lifeboat and he doesn't even know it. He's what shatters the instinct.  
  
"Let's go," she begs him. She doesn't recognize her own voice. Behind them, the trucker snorts irritably, and then he's back to his vehicle. Rachel feels something seep out of her, but it's not the craving.  
  
Out by the sloping curve of the road, the RV hulks down in the darkness. Frank is already heading inside when Rachel smells it. She stops just short of following and goes still, trying to take in the scent. Once she has it identified, once she's got its signature, it's easy to track it.  
  
It's not a pleasant smell. It's sour, but mostly it's utterly rancid. Rachel follows it like someone hypnotized. She nearly misses its source; in the darkness, it just looks like a shadow, a black stain at the side of the road.  
  
A dead bird. She crouches over the carcass and reaches out to touch it. It's still warm. It's obviously been hit by a vehicle, crushed and broken and so, so small there on the ground. One wing is half torn off, and she can see the sinew like dental floss, still attached. It lays in a pool of blood.  
  
Rachel picks it up in both hands. The tiny eyes are closed, the feathers on its head scattered in the opposite direction of growth, like it's been startled. She smooths them back with a fingertip, feels out the little skull.  
  
She's so fucking hungry.  
  
For the first time, it all really hits her. The bathroom. The burning. Her reflection. Frank. _We all thought you were dead._  
  
Ignorance isn't bliss. It's terrifying. Is her body still hers if she doesn't remember what's happened to it?  
  
Rachel is afraid. Fear isn't a new feeling for her, but not being able to suppress it is. Tears well in her eyes. Suddenly she wants to sob. She muffles the sound by sinking her teeth into the little corpse.  
  
It's pulpy, bursting in her mouth like rotten fruit. The tiny bones crunch between her teeth, and the feathers crush just as easily. Blood and meat floods her mouth and makes her shudder, and for a moment, the heat is almost gone, and she's lost in how _satisfying_ it feels, like she's fulfilling some ancient, carnal rite. It should taste as bad as it smells, but it doesn't. The metallic sting of it running down her throat is incomparable. Rachel rips off another chunk with her teeth and then another. She tips her head back, wanting to clear out the cavity of the little chest, already starving for more.  
  
It's not enough. Not nearly enough. And there's better. She could have better.  
  
She's— she's _had_ better—  
  
"Rachel?"  
  
It pierces the trance. She turns her head. Frank is standing there, staring at her. He's got Pompidou on a leash, but even so, he's not actually trying to attack her this time. He's cowering between Frank's legs, keening desperately.  
  
They both look so afraid of her. 

   
  


Being kicked out of school isn't all that bad, if Chloe has to be completely honest about it. The only thing that unequivocally sucks ass about it is that it makes Rachel completely unavailable on most days.  
  
But they've got spring break to look forward to, at least. This year, Easter's right at the end of March, which means that it's still rainy as fuck — when is it not? — but Chloe's not about to complain. Unfortunately, that means it also coincides with the full moon.  
  
She and Rachel have plans to hang out tomorrow. Chloe's supposed to pick her up early in the morning, which is cutting it way too close for comfort, but, she thinks— but she'll be fine. She's pulled off riskier things before, and maybe time has made her complacent, but she's been dealing with this shit for five years now and she thinks she's finally got the hang of it. She'll be tired, but that's nothing that coffee won't take care of.  
  
Rachel hasn't really seemed like herself lately. She's been a little distant, and sort of avoidant. Chloe knows she's been cutting class even more than usual lately. That's not typically a problem, given her 4.0, but Chloe knows Rachel well enough to get that this isn't normal for her. Maybe she and Rachel don't always have the most stable friendship, or even the healthiest one, but it's a fierce one that Chloe is desperate to sanctify. She won't lose Rachel. She _won't._ That's not just her heart talking.  
  
The hunt that night is a blur. She catches a few rabbits. She finds new scent markings out by the highway. They weren't there last month, and that's worrying. She wakes up near the cache with the make of it still in her nostrils. She eats the bait as she thinks it over. One of these months, she's not going to be so lucky. She's going to eventually run into the person or the thing (or _both_ ) that's leaving those markings. But that's a bridge she'll cross when she gets to it, maybe tomorrow, maybe next month. It doesn't matter as much as Rachel does. Chloe gets dressed and gets going.  
  
She's exhausted by the time she gets to Blackwell, but then Rachel isn't even there. Chloe sits in her truck and sends her a handful of texts. She waits. And she waits. Half an hour passes, and then a full hour, and then finally, _finally_ , seventy two minutes later, Rachel comes walking into the lot.  
  
Chloe is full on pissed by then. She's aching and exhausted and the raw meat has settled thick like concrete inside of her. Rachel climbs up into the truck, and Chloe is on her, snapping. She's glad that at least the foaming mouth always stays behind with her other form.  
  
"The fuck took you so long?" she asks miserably. This isn't the first time that this has happened in the past couple of months, and it's turned her bitter. She shouldn't have even been surprised.  
  
Maybe Rachel is getting bored of her.  
  
"I'm sorry," says Rachel. "I forgot."  
  
Chloe blanches. She feels like throwing up. "You forgot we were hanging today?" she turns to her friend, wanting to reach out and shake her. Or kiss her. Fuck, she doesn't even know any more.  
  
Rachel falters. To her credit, she looks guilty. She's got a hand up and she's fingering the blue feather at her ear, her expression uneasy. "I've got a lot of shit going on right now, Chloe," she says.  
  
"Or you're hiding something," Chloe spits. It comes out of her like a mouthful of acid right into Rachel's face. Rachel's expression shows it. She sits up a little higher in her seat.  
  
"Well," says Rachel, looking at her dead in the eyes, "maybe we're both hiding things from one another." The way she puts emphasis on _both_ allows no room for doubt. Chloe feels the cold sweat of dread crawl up her arms and her back.  
  
"Yeah, no," she says, snorting derisively, because what else is there to do? She's held her cards close to her chest, kept her worst secret from Rachel successfully for nearly four years and she's going to keep it that way. For her sake. This is _different_ than whatever Rachel's concealing from her. "Bullshit. You're being totally, I don't know. Just fucking weird lately. Ignoring me. What the hell did I even _do_? You could at least _tell_ me so I could _fix_ it."  
  
Rachel looks at her, the coolness now gone tepid. Chloe waits. She's not going to offer any quarter. After several moments of tension, Rachel relents. She purges.  
  
"I've... I've met someone," she says finally, hesitantly.  
  
Chloe just stares at her.  
  
"Someone that's changed my life," says Rachel. "As stupid as that sounds."  
  
Chloe immediately decides that she hates this person. She needs no more information than that. She hates this person. She hates them. This knowledge, dropped on her so suddenly, threatens to turn her hysterical.  
  
"Great," says Chloe. It comes out much louder than she wants it to, flooding the cabin of the vehicle. "Great! I don't care. How about you get the hell out of my truck and go spend the day with this _amazing_ person?"  
  
Rachel's face changes. She looks so hurt. Good. Chloe wants her to be hurt. She wants her to know how it feels. She wants Rachel to ride the same highs and the same lows, because that's how they roll together. At least Chloe's always thought of it that way. But she doesn't actually want her to leave — no fucking way — and it really sucks to see Rachel actually obey her command. She's reaching for the door handle, shooting her a look through narrowed eyes.  
  
_Stay,_ Chloe wants to beg like the dog she is. _Stay. I'm sorry._  
  
"Maybe we can try again tomorrow," says Rachel lifelessly. She slips out of the truck.  
  
Chloe's head sinks down against the steering wheel.

   
  


They're five miles out from Arcadia Bay, and they're catching the last dredges of a moving storm, when Frank asks her where she wants to go. Rachel realizes that she hasn't even been thinking about it. She tells him to pick. She should have guessed that they'd wind up at the Two Whales, which is apparently still Frank's favorite idling spot.  
  
Rachel brushes her teeth twice before she even thinks about getting out. She asks Frank for a change of clothes. He takes his bloodied sweater from her with a thousand yard stare. The way he's looking at her threatens to make her soften, but she can't be soft right now. She redresses. She puts her hat on. She gets out.  
  
Chloe's truck is in the lot, because of course it is. Somehow, that's the thing that makes the most sense out of the past sixteen hours. Rachel walks right past it.  
  
"I'll be out here," says Frank. "I'm gonna let Pompidou out."  
  
She gives him a look back over her shoulder. "I won't be long," she promises, and then she opens the door and sees her own face looking back at her.  
  
Rachel startles, but it's not her reflection. She's staring into her own _MISSING_ poster.  
  
The first thing she thinks, for some reason, is that she's glad that it's her favorite photo of herself. The second thing she thinks is that she's pretty sure that she's five foot _six_ , thanks. The third is the knowledge that she should have asked Frank to take her straight to the police station.  
  
But she can't do that. She already knows why, even if she can't remember.  
  
Rachel tears her eyes away from her poster and pulls her hat off of her head as she steps into the diner. There's the quiet sound of silverware and glass clicking together, and a smell that is so overpoweringly tempting that it nearly knocks her flat on her ass. It's a complete assault on her senses, a dozen times more satisfying than her sad, rancid meal earlier. It makes her a little bit dizzy. It's easy to track it. She turns.  
  
Chloe's there at their usual table, sitting across from a girl Rachel's never seen before. Chloe looks like she's been through hell and high water, all slumping shoulders and oily hair. In other words, Chloe looks about the same as ever. Except for the part where she smells better than anything Rachel's ever experienced before in her life.  
  
And instead of thinking about a delicate way to approach her, Rachel is all twitching hands, and a part of her shrieks for the chance to find the source of that scent, to get to its viscera.  
  
Chloe is in the middle of saying something when she notices her. Her eyes widen like she's just found God. Rachel walks to her. A part of her is acutely aware that she is dangerous to Chloe right now. The rest of her doesn't give a fuck.  
  
"Wow," she says, and maybe trying a joke right now is in bad taste, but _something_ has to break that look on Chloe's face. "You look the way I feel."  
  
Something shocks through Chloe. Her arm goes striking out, like a reflex. It sweeps her plate right off of the floor. It goes crashing in a cascade of ceramic and hash browns.  
  
" _Rachel?!_ " Chloe shrieks, and the high register of her voice — Rachel's never heard it sound like that before — might be funny if she weren't suddenly sobbing. She launches herself out of the booth and right at her. Where Frank had shown shock and restraint, Chloe is expectations and intensity. She nearly knocks her over. Her hands claw at her. Her arms crush her.  
  
Rachel buries her face in Chloe's hair. She smells like coming home and she smells like dying and she smells so, so _alive_ , and Rachel realizes, with a surge of nausea, that she can feel the beat of Chloe's pulse in her mouth.  
  
Chloe dissolves against her. Maybe that's what helps Rachel keep it together. 

   
  


Max might not know the first thing about Rachel Amber, and maybe she doesn't know Chloe Price any more, but what she does know is that they need to be alone right now.  
  
She gets up from the table and slips away as quietly as she can. Chloe doesn't even afford her a glance. How can she, with her face pressed to Rachel's slim shoulder?  
  
_I need some air,_ Max thinks foggily. She walks outside of the diner. It's still a beautiful rain-wet morning. Everything is just the same as it was when they came in, except that nothing is the same. Max realizes that she's left the photo of (she won't call it ' _the wolf_ ', she won't) Chloe back in there, but that's definitely the least of anyone's concerns right now.  
  
She hovers out on the sidewalk, not knowing what to do. She checks her phone and then looks around. Cars move idly by. People wait at the bus stop. A rough looking man lets his dog run around the lot. There isn't anything particularly unusual happening out here, nothing different in the lives and worlds of the people she's looking out at. Max might be eighteen today, and Chloe might be... _something_ , but nothing else has changed. The world hasn't shifted for anyone but her.  
  
Max watches the dog, and the man watches her. He's a mean looking thing, she thinks. The dog. The man. Both. It doesn't really matter. She's got a hand in her bag and she's running it over her camera, contemplating whether or not she should try for a shot of the dog at play, when the man speaks to her.  
  
"You like dogs?" he asks. She turns to look at him. He's all leather and tattoos, the absolute exact picture of the sort of person her parents have always told her to stay away from.  
  
"I think so," says Max.  
  
The man seems to consider that answer, before he offers her a cigarette from the pack he's dug out of his pocket. Max shakes her head no, too tired to be intimidated. He seems to be fine with that, shoving one into his mouth and lighting up. "It's been a long fucking day," he says to her.  
  
It's only eight in the morning.  
  
"Yeah," she agrees. "It's been a long day."

**Author's Note:**

> Come find me on Tumblr [here](http://mjrrgr.tumblr.com), if you'd like. 
> 
> Comments, critique, questions— all are encouraged and appreciated.


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